From the Mouths of Dogs: What Our Pets Teach Us about Life, Death, and Being Human

Hollars, B.J.

ISBN 10: 0803277296 / ISBN 13: 9780803277298

Published by University of Nebraska Press, 2015

About this Item

pp. 224.

Seller Inventory # 373563221

Bibliographic Details

• Title: From the Mouths of Dogs: What Our Pets Teach Us about Life, Death, and Being Human
• Publisher: University of Nebraska Press
• Publication Date: 2015
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0803277296
• ISBN 13: 9780803277298
• Binding: Hardcover
• Condition: New

About this title

Synopsis

What is it that dogs have done to earn the title of “man’s best friend”? And more broadly, how have all of our furry, feathered, and four-legged brethren managed to enrich our lives? Why do we love them? What can we learn from them? And why is it so difficult to say good-bye? Join B.J. Hollars as he attempts to find out—beginning with an ancient dog cemetery in Ashkelon, Israel, and moving to the present day.

Hollars’s firsthand reports recount a range of stories: the arduous existence of a shelter officer, a woman’s relentless attempt to found a senior-dog adoption facility, a family’s struggle to create a one-of-a-kind orthotic for its bulldog, and the particular bond between a blind woman and her Seeing Eye dog. The book culminates with Hollars’s own cross-country journey to Hartsdale Pet Cemetery—the country’s largest and oldest pet cemetery—to begin the long-overdue process of laying his own childhood dog to rest.

Through these stories, Hollars reveals much about our pets but even more about the humans who share their lives, providing a much-needed reminder that the world would be a better place if we took a few cues from man’s best friends.

About the Author

B.J. Hollars is professor of English at the University of Wisconsin–Eau Claire. He is the author of numerous books, including Flock Together: A Love Affair with Extinct Birds (Nebraska, 2017), Go West, Young Man: A Father and Son Rediscover America on the Oregon Trail​ (Nebraska, 2021), Midwestern Strange: Hunting Monsters, Martians, and the Weird in Flyover Country (Nebraska, 2019), Dispatches from the Drownings: Reporting the Fiction of Nonfiction (New Mexico, 2014), This Is Only a Test, From the Mouths of Dogs: What Our Pets Teach Us about Life, Death, and Being Human (Nebraska, 2015), and Thirteen Loops: Race, Violence, and the Last Lynching in America. Hollars is also the founder and executive director of the Chippewa Valley Writers Guild.